No girl, no Lolita

Lolita: The Story of a Cover Girl considers the history of making a cover for Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Lolita, regarded as the most notorious and acclaimed literary work of the 20th century.

In our minds Lolita is associated with a sexualized teen girl, however, as Mary Gaitskill writes in an essay included in the book, Nabokov's book isn't about sex but about the "infernal combination" of love and cruelty.

In fact Nabokov did not want his novel cover to portray a girl or any human form for that matter:

I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain. And no girls.

Nabokov was looking for an artist, 

Who would be capable of creating a romantic, delicately drawn, non-Freudian and non-juvenile, picture for LOLITA (a dissolving remoteness, a soft American landscape, a nostalgic highway—that sort of thing)? There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl.

But thanks to Hollywood and Stanley Kubrick's 1962 rendition of the novel, the image of the "girl" has stuck to Lolita.

Do judge a book by its cover

I am amazed by the deep thought that often go into the making of a book cover.

I imagine that thoughtful books have thoughtful covers.

Take for instance, the cover of William Gass' new novel Middle C (at first, I had thought it to represent "middle class," and why not? The battered and vanishing middle class is the subject matter of so much discourse in Western media today).

Artist Gabrielle Wilson, had initially proposed a book cover with a half-concealed-by-music sheets-human face on it, to reveal a basic profile of the protagonist Joey, who is an introvert, average intellectual, a University lecturer and an amateur pianist. 

But Joey in his mind, is also a brilliant professor who runs an organization called the inhumanity museum, a dark place full of clippings of news of world catastrophes. 

Wilson was in a dilemma--to show or not to show the other immaterial life that Joey is steeped in on the book cover. She eventually settled for a cover that gives a hint of Joey's real life--a middling, ordinary one, best represented by the piano key of C.

The history of the book cover that stayed is as follows:

I asked piano-playing friends and piano repair shops in New York for a C key, to no avail. I called Steinway & Sons on 57th Street, and they connected me with Anthony Gilroy at their Queens factory. He was perplexed but entertained by the idea of shipping a single key to Manhattan. The next day I received a beautifully hand-carved ivory key, but I discovered that a full-size key is nearly two feet long. I called Anthony again to see if the factory could cut it shorter and add a black C sharp key. I photographed them from above on a giant turquoise Pantone swatch, aiming to give the ensemble a menacing, lonely mood. Once in the jacket layout, I paired it with the elegant, slightly traditional Sackers Roman typeface so as not to distract from the image.